Additional information
by Eric Pfeifer (Author)
The present pilot study is using theoretical, practical and scientific knowledge in order to focus the possibilities and competences of music therapy approaches in today's schools and everyday school life as affected by migration and interculturality. What is more, the preventive, integrative and supportive aspects of music therapy in this field shall also be discussed. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, questions concerning self concept and multimodality are handled as well. In particular, there is a triangulation of methods, combining standardised quantitative testing, participant observation and video sequential analysis. The task is to explore the children's ideas and possibilities of implementing and using bodily and multimodal expressions for the purpose of bridging foreignness, feelings of foreignness in themselves and/or between themselves and their classmates in a music therapy setting. Another question concentrates on eventual positive effects of such music therapy approaches referring to the development of the self, self concept and identity. Constantly, the mentioned and offered assumptions are derived from practical experience gained through a music therapy project that took place in a class with first-graders at a primary school in Austria. Last but not least, additional cross-references relating to relevant contents (current status of intercultural music therapy research and practice, music therapy in schools, music therapy and musical education) are invoked and argued.
